Yamato (2199)
:This article describes the space battleship ''Yamato as depicted in Space Battleship Yamato 2199 and its sequels. For information on other vessels bearing the name Yamato in this series or in other series or movies, see the Yamato disambiguation page. The Yamato (BBY-01) (ヤマト, Yamato) is a United Nations Cosmo Navy space battleship. First conceived as an evacuation ship for survivors fleeing the Garmillas-Earth War, an unexpected gift of highly advanced wave motion technology from the planet Iscandar convinces the leadership of the United Nations Cosmo Force to use it in a more ambitious and dangerous plan to save all life on Earth from extinction. During its first year of service, Yamato and its crew also become involved in the Garmillas Civil War, bring an end to the war with the Great Garmillas Empire, discover the legendary world Shambleau, and make first human contact with the Gatlantis Empire. Armaments and Technical Specifications Yamato's offensive and defensive systems make it Earth's most formidable warship. Shock cannon turrets mounted along the length of the upper hull provide its primary conventional firepower, firing high energy positron beams, cannon shells, or a combination of the two that can destroy many smaller Garmillan and Gatlantean vessels in a single shotibid ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "The Sun Sets on Pluto"). Missiles and torpedo launchers can fire in all directions ("Point of No Return", "Over the Black Light"). Rapid fire anti-aircraft batteries on the port and starboard sides provide added protection around the ship's bridge tower ("Toward a Sea of Stars", "Under a Rainbow Sun"). With a hull that can safely absorb significant damage, Yamato becomes the battlefield equal of the Garmillas Imperial Astro Fleet's ''Zoelguut''-Class super dreadnought ("Point of No Return", "Under a Rainbow Sun"). However, the addition of wave motion energy elevates it beyond almost all other adversaries. Until late 2199, the ship was equipped with a wave motion gun built into its bow. A single blast of the gun can vaporize targets at least as big as continents ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "Wish Upon a Star"). However, the gun requires time to build to full capacity, and additional minutes afterward to recharge, leaving Yamato immobile and unable use its other weapons, and limiting its effectiveness to larger and relatively stationary objects ("Graveyard of the Universe", "Over the Black Light"). The wave motion engine can also generate a durable wave motion shield enveloping the ship that can temporarily deflect very high energy hits and sustained attacks. The shield can operate for only twenty minutes at maximum ("The Trap on All Sides"). At full strength, Yamato can field a squadron of Hayabusa fighters deployed from a launch bay in the ship's keel, and two Cosmo Zero fighters from catapults on the ship's aft upper deck ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field", "The Inescapable Trap"). Two missile boats are maintained for water combat ("Prison Planet 17", "The Forever War"). In space flight, Yamato is unequaled in the Cosmo Navy. Its wave motion engine helps to make it the fleet's first and only warp capable vessel, bypassing the speed of light for nearly instantaneous travel across interplanetary and interstellar distances, up to at least twelve light years in one warp ("Wish Upon a Star"). Sub-light flight through space surpasses the maximum of all other UNCN ship classes. At full cruising speed, Yamato can cross in mere hours interplanetary distances that would normally take days or weeks, and it can cover the distance from the outermost reaches of the solar system to the orbit of Earth within a day ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Memories of the Blue Planet", Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark). Under emergency circumstances, it can achieve even higher velocities ("One Man's War"). The ship can also operate under a wide range of other conditions. It can fly and hover in planetary atmospheres, augmented by retractable wings stored in its midsection ("Toward a Sea of Stars", "A Choice for the Future"). It can set down and lift off from dry land, and it can take advantage of its naval battleship design and navigate on bodies of water ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "The Distant Promised Land") and to a limited extent underwater ("The Sun Sets on Pluto"). : Yamato is also equipped with an array of other advanced technologies that support its operations. Artificial gravity is created in most areas of the ship ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field"). Two rocket anchors mounted on Yamato's upper bow can be fired to hold the vessel firmly in place and to stop its momentum; they can also be used to hold an enemy vessel for close proximity fighting ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark). Food and drink are primarily provided by the OMCS food processing system, which reduces the need to transport food supplies ("Point of No Return"). A hyperspace-based communication system allows for faster-than-light contact within a star system, and possibly farther if interference is not present ("Farewell to the Solar System"). Internal scanners provide information on ship status and life signs within the ship ("The Sun Sets on Pluto", "The Forever War"). External equipment can provide information on the ship's immediate surroundings out to at least fifty light seconds (approximately 15 million kilometers) with cosmo radar, as well as optical and infrared scanners ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere", "Under a Rainbow Sun", "The Planet That We Head For"). A VLBI telescope can make long-distance astronomical observations, returning clear images of planet-sized objects from more than eight light years' distance ("Wish Upon a Star"). Ship Sections History Origins Earth's first contact with an alien civilization in 2191, the Great Garmillas Empire, quickly turned into a war that overwhelmed its limited abilities over the following years ("Messenger of Iscandar", "A World I Once Saw", "Out of the Forest of Memory"). As the ships of the UN Cosmo Navy were outclassed by their alien opponents and as the human homeworld was turned into a radioactive desert by a ceaseless Garmillan onslaught, the leadership of the Earth Federation saw escape as the only option. Under Project Izumo, humanity would build its first interstellar spaceship and ferry a small group of survivors out of the solar system to find a new planet to inhabit. A site underneath the dry seabed of the East China Sea, off the Bonomisaki Cape of Japan, was chosen for construction. The new ship was built partially underground and partially above the surface; its exposed upper hull was disguised as the wreck of the naval battleship [[IJN Yamato|IJN Yamato]], which sank in the area almost two and a half centuries earlier, to hide the project from enemy forces ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Toward a Sea of Stars", "A Choice for the Future"). As construction commenced on the vessel and a crew was selected, a surprise alien visitor arrived in early 2198 with information that would shake up the Izumo Plan. Princess Yurisha Iscandar presented an invitation to travel to the distant world of Iscandar and take possession of the Cosmo Reverse System, a device that would remove the radiation threatening Earth's surviving population and restore Earth's ravaged biosphere. She also offered plans for a highly advanced wave motion system to power the human ship for the round trip journey to the Large Magellanic Cloud and back. Izumo was secretly scrapped, and as part of the new Yamato Plan, the vessel was re-designed to accommodate a wave motion engine. Recognizing the incredible energies that could be generated by the engine, Major Shiro Sanada, a scientist serving in the UNCF, designed a wave motion shield for defense and an unparalleled weapon of mass destruction, a wave motion gun. Just as construction was being completed one year later, a sister of Princess Yurisha arrived in the solar system with a wave motion core that would drive the engine. The space battleship Yamato was ready for flight, and the crew were notified of their new mission by their commanding officer, Admiral Juzo Okita, only a day prior to launch ("Messenger of Iscandar", "Toward a Sea of Stars", "Out of the Forest of Memory", "They're Coming!"). 2199: Voyage to Iscandar Yamato's outbound flight through the solar system became a trial for its new technologies. Its shock cannons easily took out a Garmillan carrier and an interplanetary missile sent to destroy it before liftoff, and the wave motion shields safely deflected the missile's explosion at point blank range ("Toward a Sea of Stars"). One day later, the battleship conducted its first warp and traveled from Mars to Jupiter almost instantaneously, and at Jupiter, Yamato obliterated a massive Garmillas floating continent hidden in the gas giant's atmosphere with its wave motion gun ("Escape from the Jupiter Sphere"). A condenser failure on the main engine the very next day forced a detour to the moon Enceladus for supplies of cosmonite-90 to make repairs ("Gravestone on a Frozen Field"), but the battleship was soon ready for a full assault on Pluto. Combined with its full fighter squadron, Yamato fended off a counterattack, bombarded the main enemy base, and wiped out the Garmillas presence in the solar system ("The Trap on All Sides", "The Sun Sets on Pluto"). : .]]The ship was ready for the demands of the long mission ahead and headed out into the Milky Way Galaxy and beyond--but the Garmillans were no longer taking their human adversaries for granted. As word of the ship's successes reached the highest levels of the empire and inspired conquered worlds to defy the empire's rule, Leader Abelt Dessler grew increasingly focused on stopping it ("Wish Upon a Star", "What Lies Beyond"). Yamato was very nearly destroyed at the Battle of Carell 163, and was saved only by a surprise Garmillan withdrawal ("Point of No Return"). Delayed in reaching Iscandar and with morale lower than ever, members of the crew who had been conspiring to re-start the Izumo Plan launched a short-lived mutiny ("A Choice for the Future"). After the mutiny was put down, officers who had been exploring a nearby Earthlike planet returned with information that would save the mission: a network of ancient alien subspace gates that could trim months off Yamato's journey ("Out of the Forest of Memory"). To access the network, though, the ship would have to confront those who currently controlled it--the Garmillas Empire. Admiral Okita and his crew devised a plan to charge through the network before destroying the hub located at the planet Balun with the wave motion gun. The ship arrived safely at the far side of the network on the edge of the Large Magellanic Cloud, having not only rendered the network nearly useless, but also destroying thousands of enemy warships in the process and crippling the Garmillas military ("Over the Black Light"). : Yamato was now seen as the single greatest threat to Dessler's empire. A particularly brutal engagement in the Rainbow Star Cluster failed to stop its progress toward Iscandar ("Under a Rainbow Sun"), and after happening upon a liberated prison world, Yamato was given drydock repairs and military intelligence from members of the Garmillan resistance movement against Leader Dessler ("Prison Planet 17", "The Planet That We Head For"). When Yamato arrived in the home star system of both Iscandar and Garmillas, Dessler attempted to take down the battleship by any means necessary, even if it meant annihilating his own capital city. During the battle, Yamato fired its wave motion gun against Dessler's attack, saving not only itself but the entire capital. In doing so, Yamato demonstrated humanity's honorable intentions, even as their own ruler proved himself a menace to his own people. Dessler was assumed to have died during the battle, and with the war having come to an abrupt end, Yamato was allowed to fly on to its destination ("One Man's War", "The Distant Promised Land"). : After arriving on Iscandar, the crew of Yamato learned that the ship itself may have caused the mission to fail. Queen Starsha Iscandar, having been told about Yamato's wave motion gun by Dessler and witnessing it herself during the fight over Garmillas, was horrified that her planet's technological gift had been used to create a superweapon. She refused to deliver the long-awaited Cosmo Reverse System, concluding that humanity was too dangerous to survive. However, the intervention of two people who were very close to her eventually changed her mind, and she personally brought the device to Yamato--but she demand Admiral Okita's pledge that humanity would never again create wave motion-based weapons. The firing components of Yamato's wave motion gun were removed and replaced with the Cosmo Reverse System, turning the battleship itself into the instrument of Earth's survival. The forward muzzle of the gun was sealed, and a plaque announcing a new treaty signed by representatives of Earth, Iscandar, and the Great Garmillas Empire was mounted on the muzzle cover ("The Distant Promised Land", Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark). : The return voyage to Earth was much faster and less eventful, except for two major incidents. The first, occurring a month after departing Iscandar, began when Yamato was ambushed by an expeditionary fleet of the Gatlantis Empire that sought to take the ship as their own. Yamato escaped, but found itself trapped inside a region of space with seemingly no connection to the rest of the universe. On the planet at the heart of the region, Shambleau, a human landing party discovered members of a Garmillas task force that had also been trapped. Yamato and the task force would cooperate and fight side-by-side after the Gatlanteans tracked Yamato to Shambleau (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark). The second took place one month later when Yamato attempted to reactivate the only undamaged subspace gate at Balun. The ship was hit by a surprise attack from rogue Garmillan forces and fled through the gate and into a subspace corridor--only to be seized and boarded by troops serving Abelt Dessler, still alive and intending to use Yamato to reclaim the empire for himself. After repelling the boarding party, Yamato opened fire on Dessler's flagship with a volley of shells from its shock cannons, fatally crippling it ("The Forever War"). : Yamato returned to Earth on December 8th. The Cosmo Reverser was activated almost immediately upon arrival, and Yamato turned the dying desert planet back into the watery, green world it had once been (Space Battleship Yamato 2199: Odyssey of the Celestial Ark, "Memories of the Blue Planet"). Uniforms and Protective Gear See [[Yamato uniforms and protective gear (2199)|''Yamato uniforms and protective gear (2199)]] for more comprehensive descriptions. See United Nations Cosmo Navy for information on UNCN uniforms and gear not specific to Yamato. Gallery Behind the Scenes *Unlike the original 1974 incarnation of ''Yamato, the space battleship was not constructed inside the wreckage of the twentieth century naval warship. This takes into account the [[wikipedia:Japanese_battleship_Yamato#Wreck_discovery|discovery and confirmation of the IJN Yamato]] at the bottom of the East China Sea in the 1980s. Photos show that the ship had broken into two large separate pieces and multiple fragments scattered across the ocean floor as it sank.[https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FP0tAAAAIBAJ&sjid=f6cFAAAAIBAJ&pg=6363%2C2384338 "Remains of sunken Japanese battleship Yamato discovered," Reading Eagle and Associated Press, August 4, 1985, p. D13] Without a relatively intact wreck, building a large starship inside of it would have been impossible, regardless of other engineering challenges. Notes and References Category:Spaceships Category:United Nations Cosmo Navy vessel Category:Battleship